I have been working on a project for the last 2 months or so, and it contains about 500GB of video in one project, all on an external drive. I'm creating around 30 different edits within this project to create a series of web shows all filmed at one time. I simply am just making new seqences for each edit and so forth.

When I tried to save the project one day, it took a lot longer than usual, so i cancled it but got the beach ball. I waited for a while but ended up having to force quit the project as it was freezing up my system. I went back to try to reopen the project (which is now a whopping 1.5GB) and the loading status bar would freeze at about 15% every single time. I managed to open up an auto saved version which was very close to the original, but it was only 228MB (still massive, but not 1.5GB massive). Saving this project takes ages as well, up to 15 minutes and it lags my system in the process. I have 8GB of RAM so I don't know why it would have trouble processing it. Why are my project files so big and such difference sizes? And is there any way to open the original project file? Here is what I have tried to open it:

Open new project --> Import project file. It never ends up loading, so I quit after 15 or 20 minutes of waiting.

Load the project into AE (which works just fine) and export it out as a new PrP project file. I end up with an error message when I try to open it saying something about a sequence that doesnt exist or there is a missing codec.

I have cleaned out the cache but it doesnt seem to help, because it still wont open.

My only reasoning to this is that the projects are just too big to handle anymore. So my question is if there is any way to create smaller, more managable projects from the larger main one, rather than having a bunch of little sequences. All of my media comes from one drive, two folders, so how would I go about maintaining the same media location as the orginal project without having to relink source media or any of that stuff.

Have you ever tried the Project Manager, an option from the Project menu (CS6) or File menu (CC). From there you can create a new trimmed project for every sequence, one at a time if you choose to. This way you can create your new projects for all your sequences and save them one by one to your hard drive while maintaining the footage at you external drive. And you won't need to relink anything. It's a very easy and useful feature.

Following is a screenshot of the Project Manager configured to trim only the first sequence from my main project and create a new project for it.

When I tried the project manager, it is giving me crazy huge numbers at the bottom...Will the new trimmed projects actually be 40GB? and is the original project size refering to all the media that is in that project and not the project file itself? Im just a little confused on where these numbers are coming from...

- Original Project Size: the size of your project alonside all the footage linked to it.

- Resulting Project Size: the size your project will have with the footage you used in the selected sequences.

As long as you keep the "Create Mew Trimmed Project" selected, it will not move or copy any of the footage. It will only generate a new Project with the footage essencial and used in the selected sequences. Then you can save this new project in the folder and with the name you'll want it to be. Also, you do not have to leave the option "Rename Media Files to Match Clip Names" since it will change the name of the files to the ones you gave them in the Project panel.